With the continued development and expansion of multi user data handling/processing systems, including their application to a variety of what in the past had been considered to be diverse user requirements, the performance of the communication network through which the users of the system exchange information has become a principal focus of design efforts. This is particularly true in the intra-office environment where the communication scheme chosen may be configured as a local area network, having a distributed architecture, permitting system components to be selectively added and replaced to meet the needs of the user.
Typically, control of access to the communication link through which all of the nodes of the network are coupled is carried out using either identical control and data channels (usually dedicated) and/or a centralized control facility (i.e. master station). Unfortunately each of these approaches introduces either additional system complexity and/or reduction in throughput performance to the extent that such schemes limit the adaptability of the network to a wide variety of user applications. For an exemplary illustration of a number of such communication channel allocation approaches attention may be directed to the following U.S. Pat. Nos. which exemplify the state of the art: 3,535,636; 3,261,922; 3,573,379; 4,409,687; 3,590,166; 4,127,744; 3,898,390; 4,284,848; 4,012,597; 3,513,264; 4,013,840; 4,262,171; 2,584,259; 4,339,816; 3,808,537; 3,809,816; 4,360,927; and 3,617,644.
For the most part this patent literature describes systems that employ a control or master station that handles the establishment of all communication channels among users (as commonly employed in mobile radio communication systems as detailed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,989,390; 4,127,744 and 3,590,166), or use dedicated channel assignments for the respective stations (e.g. a station's identity is a particular frequency).